'Obsession with perfect grades is...': VP Dhankhar blasts coaching centres, warns of robotised minds

Vice President VP Dhankhar on Saturday sounded alarm on the booming coaching centre industry in India, warning that it's doing more harm than good to our education system. He expressed concerns that these centres, obsessed with churning out perfect scores, were turning students into rote-learning machines rather than curious, creative thinkers. 

"The obsession with perfect grades and standardized scores has compromised curiosity, which is an inalienable facet of human intelligence," he said while speaking at 4th Convocation of Indian Institute Of Information Technology, Kota - known as India's coaching hub where thousands of students prepare for competitive exams like IIT-JEE and NEET. 

"The seats are limited, but coaching centres are all over the country. They prepare the minds of students for years together and robotize them. Their thinking has absolutely stymied. A lot of psychological problems can arise out of it." 

Dhankhar opposed the idea of education being treated like an assembly line, saying, "We must end this assembly-line culture, because this culture is very dangerous for our education." Coaching centers, he added, are against the flow of the National Education Policy. "This creates unnecessary hiccups and impediments in growth and progress."

The Vice President also criticised coaching centres for prioritising heavy spending on ads. "Money is poured into billboards and advertisements in newspapers. This money comes from those who either take loans or who painstakingly paid to make their future brighter. This is not optimal utilisation of money, and these advertisements are alluring, but they are eyesores for our civilisational ethos," he noted.

He warned against the cramming-driven education system that prioritises rote learning over real understanding. "We are facing the crisis of cramming culture, which has transformed vibrant minds into mechanical repositories of temporary information. There is no absorption. There is no understanding."

Dhankhar said coaching centres are creating intellectual zombies rather than creative thinkers. "Cramming creates memory without meaning. Cramming creates memory without meaning and adds degrees without depth."